ABSTRACT
The above e-mails are based on real stories recounted by professors and students in interviews conducted at an urban public college (UPC). These student pleas for exemptions, exceptions, and grade changes reflect an inescapable problem for faculty at UPC: the ongoing attempt by students to negotiate academic standards outside the classroom. When students ask for flexibility, they demand that faculty be sensitive to their individual circumstances while at the same time manage large numbers of students within a set of institutional demands. Such requests ultimately force teachers to grapple with the inherent tensions between accommodation and control, uniform standards and individual needs, and objective and subjective measures of student performance. At UPC, and
probably in contemporary college life more generally, the extent to which academic requirements are negotiated is most visible in the one-on-one interactions between faculty and students that occur outside of class.
